Three poems by Martyn Crucefix

Empty the bath

Late and quiet with all my keysfor the door, I hope you’ve notyet been laid in your cot,but find in the bathrooma tubful of water, empty, well-used and barely lukewarm

and to tell you the truth,there’s the earth of my regret,the little warmth the waterhas, its tiny fractionsstolen from your playful heat

how it shows I’ve come too latefor the intimacyof your straight-backed bodycut at the waist by cooling water,those few gallons of sudsy washthat cooled that much more slowlyfor you being there

that now I let go, stir awaywith both hands, think somethingobvious, grasping what is gone.

Nightmare

His first, its sudden grotesquesmashing upthrough the trusted surfaceof sleep, a scrabbling clutchto be escaped from,a tightening on leg and arm,fastened to his vulnerableheart, stomach, breath

– yet what manner of thingis it that makes him burstinto real tears,the bewildering touch of night,inconsolable, though strokedand held to, broughtto familiar light, our warmth

what nightmare, monstrous,risen black-combed and drippingfrom sleep must it be

– and the question enoughto rattle his father too,as if such innocence and trust,such never-known-hurt, norarm-raised, voice-raised, neglector lonelinesscould find such ground for fear,then could not he, or onewith hardly more reason

invent evil and ridethe monster back to the deepand back still further to waking?

La-la-la

In the thickest of night,before the altar of this cryinggod, I kneel down

my head swollen with the hoursthrough which I have not moved,thinking only, if onlyI could propitiatewith a touch, with a la-la-la,persuade my unsettled darlingto withdraw a while from the world

then I’d follow, his greatestenthusiast, as I amall day long, when his few poundsbelly-out a springy canvas chairand I play musicthumping with rhythm and noise

and dance for his delight

for those waving armsthat I’m certain make answerto my own, my stamp-stampand shake about the heart,my hands up, hooray,as spirits fly through the air,infantile and optimistic

Martyn Crucefix’s recent publications include The Time We Turned (Shearsman, 2014), A Hatfield Mass (Worple Press, 2014) and Daodejing – a new version in English (Enitharmon, 2016. Forthcoming are a new collection, The Lovely Disciplines (Seren, 2017), and chapbook, O. at the Edge of the Gorge (Guillemot Press, 2017). Website and blog: http://www.martyncrucefix.com